Tag: Skin

“I can only talk for a few minutes. I’m on my way to a penis facial.”

I was on the phone with my mother, who had called me during her usual time in the morning—right around 10 A.M. Since I work freelance, I’m usually just settling into my emails or leaving my yoga class at this time. I’m not usually headed to a beauty treatment that sounds like something you’d search for on a porn website.

But there I was, marching down Lexington Avenue on a Wednesday morning toward Georgia Louise Atelier in New York City for the celebrity facialist’s coveted Hollywood EGF facial. This treatment—unofficially called the “penis facial” and praised by the likes of Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett—promises a “red carpet-level glow” after just one session. It’s got the celebrity price tag to match at $650, but that’s a small price to pay for skin that’s paparazzi-ready. Seeing as I had a trip to Paris coming up that I was hoping to look impossibly fresh for, I jumped at the opportunity to give it a whirl.

Mom, however, was not that convinced. “Do they, like, hit you in the face with it?” she asked. “Do they use the sperm as a mask?”

None of the above, it turns out. The Hollywood EGF facial actually utilizes one of Georgia Louise’s signature serums, which contains EGF, or Epidermal Growth Factor. EGF is derived from the progenitor cells of fibroblast (i.e. the cells that produce collagen and elastin) that are taken from newborn baby foreskin.

Now, before you clutch your pearls, thinking that I had baby foreskin rubbed into my face, rest easy. The foreskin is collected during circumcision, at which point the stem cells are extracted through a centrifuge. They are then propagated to create more cells, and those stem cells and peptides are what are rubbed into your skin during the facial. The atelier claims they help “plump your skin and make you glow.”

“Growth factors are like messengers that tell your skin cells to work the best they can. Our body uses them to help repair itself from wounds, and most recently they have been used to reverse skin aging,” says Joshua Zeichner, M.D., Director of Cosmetic and Clinical Research in the Department of Dermatology Mount Sinai Hospital. “While growth factors hold promise, we don’t yet have enough data to say they definitively work better than traditional treatments, like retinol or lasers. However, they are extremely safe, and the only risk is to your pocketbook because they can be pricey.”

Watch what it’s like to get the facial:

But that’s just one, tiny part of the otherwise involved treatment. When I arrived at Georgia Louise Atelier, my aesthetician walked me through the whole process. She’d cleanse and tone my skin before applying a TCA peel to sterilize it ahead of the microneedling. (Similar to glycolic acid, TCA, or trichloroacetic acid, helps exfoliate and is often used to help with discoloration.) Then, she’d apply a numbing agent—in this case, lidocaine—for 20 minutes while I sat under an LED lamp. “This just makes the microneedling more comfortable,” she explained. Then, she’d microneedle, and infused the EGF serum cocktail, followed by a second round of TCA to sterilize, an alginate mask (which is a thick mask that dries to a rubber-like consistency and then peeled off) for elasticity, and some moisturizer to finish it off. She’d warned me ahead of time to expect about 24 hours of redness and downtime, so I made sure to clear my plans.

At first, I was a little nervous about the prospect of the microneedle. I’d had a negative experience with another celebrity-endorsed facial (Kim Kardashian’s vampire facial—which she, too, later came to regret). It left my face beat-red and scary-looking for four days after the treatment. So I prepared myself for another half-week of tomato face, just in case.

From beginning to end, my aesthetician walked me through every step of the process, which made the entire thing incredibly relaxing. She massaged my shoulders while the lidocaine did its job, and kept checking in with me to see how I was reacting to the microneedle. Unlike my somewhat traumatizing vampire facial, I didn’t even feel the microneedle as my aesthetician skipped it across my face. The only slightly unpleasant part of the facial was the scent of the peel—as Cate Blanchett delicately put it, “it smells like sperm”—but even that faded after a couple of seconds. For a treatment that worked to make me glow, it felt more like an aromatherapy massage.

When I was finally finished with the process, my aesthetician excused herself to allow me to change. I warily peered into the hand mirror next to my massage table, expecting to see Freddy Krueger staring back at me. But instead, I was met with a glowing face. The only bits that were red were the patches of thin skin around my eyes. Other than that, my face looked like I’d just given myself an at-home peel.

Once I pulled myself together (and stopped staring at myself in the mirror) my aesthetician met me outside with after-care provisions. (These, FYI, aren’t part of the treatment but are available to buy if you want them). I took home a cleanser, two serums, and a small microneedle to use at home. I was instructed to not wear any makeup for 24 hours, to keep my skin hydrated with the hydrating serum, and told that I’d start to see the full effect in a few days. After two weeks, I could start using the microneedle and the EGF serum to keep up the effects.

I’m now a week out, and can safely say this is the best facial I’ve ever gotten in my life. My skin hasn’t broken out as drastically as it has with other facials, and I’m absolutely glowing. The redness only lasted a day, and I’ve been using less concealer in the days since I got the treatment. For those afraid of microneedles, allow me to placate your fears. You won’t be left red and bloody after this treatment.

I know that the idea of injecting foreskin cells into your skin is enough to give even someone with the strongest stomach the heebie jeebies, but trust me—it’s not that big of a deal. Consider the EGF facial like that delicious, buttery croissant you love to indulge in. Do you actually want to think about the fact that it has a stick of butter in it? Probably not. But does it make you happy and glowy? Absolutely. EGF is the same. Sure, it’s got cells harvested from strange places in it. But you’re going to look like Cate Blanchett afterwards. And that makes it worth it, right?

It did for me—which is exactly what I told my mother the day after my facial. She was very happy for me, but suggested I use the treatment’s real name, and not “penis facial” when describing it. Unfortunately, I’ve never been good at listening to her.

Before and after my “penis facial”

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